


where no light dwells

by meritmut



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gothic, Vampires, heavily inspired by 'Dracula's Guest'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 10:06:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16490522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: This is what she does remember: how blue his eyes were the last time she looked into them, the way he smiled the last time he looked at her, and it is the province of the deathless to be lonely but God, that doesn’t mean she has to like it.





	where no light dwells

**Author's Note:**

> this is a couple years old but i never crossposted it here, so, in honour of the season

**

Then, on the eve of the feast of Walpurga, she comes at last to the place where—she is told—she will find what she is looking for.

High in the hills, in the dip of a valley rounded all about with cypress and yew, there is a graveyard. The village to which it was attendant is long gone: abandoned, they tell her; unholy, they mutter after the fact. But there is a marble tomb, younger than the rest, and thereto she must go.

There, she will find the thing she hunts.

 _Ah,_ Natasha nearly says, _no, this one is not like the others. I am not hunting him._ But that feels too much like risking fate, because the truth is she will not know that till she sees him again.

She passes through the graves like a shadow, the air cloying thickly with the scents of hawthorn and damp grass.

 _Death,_ she thinks. _It smells of death._

She doesn’t much like the symbolism of it, of chasing living ghosts on the night the dead walk. Too many ghosts in her own past to trust that one at least won’t find her first.

 

**

 

(She is, Natasha has been told, an irony among ironies, a thing out of folklore with an irrational loathing of superstition.

 _Irony,_ scorn makes her lip curl, _I hate that too._ Only one letter away from _iron_ , and those who cleave to the night can all agree to hate that.

 _And,_ she points out sourly, _it’s perfectly fucking rational.)_

 

**

 

And then, the tomb. Fallen-down old thing, somewhere between elegance and ruin and it should seem out of place in this remote corner of the world, but there are mausolea like it across the continent and so here it has hidden, for time out of memory, in plain sight. Until Natasha.

(Well. Almost plain sight. She can’t imagine there are too many travellers to this valley anymore.)

There is a gate, iron—naturally—a hundred years or more older than the padlock that keeps the world out and the sleepers in, but her gloves are sturdy and her picks have never let her down yet and it gives way before her like the long grass that chokes the headstones. She moves past it on silent feet and she’s already cut the power to the alarm, might as well be a ghost to the camera, yet still she hesitates on the threshold as though waiting for something to stir in the lightless corners of the tomb.

 _Alarm system, camera,_  it’s more than enough to give away the presence of the living in this house of the dead, but it’s not the only thing that betrays the wrongness of the place. There’s also the fact that no priest has ever set foot here: despite all appearances the mausoleum stands on unconsecrated ground. But you wouldn’t know that from looking—and no one ever _does_ come looking.

Superstition has its uses, after all.

(And lucky, for her, else this job would be a lot harder.)

 

**

 

She paid in blood to find this place. Did what she does best, hunted down those like her and smoked the answers out of them, watched the horror leave their eyes along with the light and felt nothing more than the surety that she was getting closer, that every head she claimed brought her a step in the right direction.

Later she would feel differently: she would feel a horror of her own, a sick weight in the pit of her stomach because that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? That they were  _like her._

_What kind of monster are you, vdova?_

The kind that keeps sharpened wood pellets at her wrists and longer, cruder-cut spikes beneath her coat: ash, blessed twice, once by a priest and once by her own tongue, for the mouth and the heart. The kind that knows the prayers to say over the body, how to break the teeth and the fount of life and watch the blood run, knows how it is done.

_The kind that hunts monsters._

She has lived this last century, every wretched day of it, dipped her hands in blood so often she will never get the stains out. She takes to wearing black so she cannot see them, gloves to hide more than the thickness of her fingernails. A monster she was and a monster she remains, but she will never be _their_ creature again.

 

**

 

The sarcophagus lid is marble and it weighs nothing.

He’s pale, so  _pale,_  there are shadows like bruises under his eyes and no living thing should look like this, should lie so still, it takes an effort beyond the human to stay her hand—to keep from lurching up over him and planting her weight on his chest to hold him there while she jams a spike between his jaws—but _human_ is not something Natasha can remember ever being.

This is what she doesremember: how blue his eyes were the last time she looked into them, the way he smiled the last time he looked at her, and it is the province of the deathless to be lonely but God, that doesn’t mean she has to like it.

There’s a piece of steel in his mouth. She fishes it out with her fingertips and tosses it into the furthest corner of the tomb, pokes around a little more for anything else in the lining of the coffin or his clothes that might hurt him. Steel is less permanent than a spike through the heart, or the jaw, even through the knees. It’s not meant to cause lasting damage. Only to ensure the sleeper does not get up on his own.

Not that they care whether he gets  _damaged,_ the bitterest part of her speaks up. Not before he’s fulfilled his purpose, anyway.

She tugs off her left glove with her teeth and digs her knife out of its sheath. Her blood isn’t the most ideal for this but it’s all she has: she drags the blade across the pad of her thumb until the stuff swells claret-dark against her skin, and peels back the sleeper’s lower lip to rub the bloody little wound over his gums.

He’s so still and the thought hits her like a bolt that she’s too late. That they did something else to him while he slept and she can’t undo it, that the dead might walk tonight but he won’t ever wake again.

 

**

 

She’s jittery by the time the breath returns to him, crouched atop the sarcophagus beside his with her elbows resting lightly on her spread knees, empty hands twitching with impatience and anxiety.

He slept through her red days. Starved wolf-hound, they let him out to hunt but he is slow and shaky and Natasha feels like a dozen other people have worn her skin since the last time she looked into his eyes but _he_ hasn’t changed, and when the fog of time and sleep have cleared from his gaze and he sees her, really _sees_ her, his cracked lips part and move in what might—had there been any sound to it more than the rush of a long-held breath escaping—be her name.

He tries again, tongue poking at his red-stained gums and it’s a gory sight when he shows his teeth to her again, shapes _Natalia_ out of the night air and some of her tension slides away at the sound of it.

She’d only gotten this far in her plan, she realises. She hadn’t accounted for what it would feel like to hear his voice again.

She’s missed it _so much._

 _Hello, milii moy,_ she says, a smile to match his working at the corner of her mouth.

_Rise and shine._

**


End file.
